Economy

Conservative economic thought is based on a single simple premise, which just so happens to be wrong. The premise is that if you make sure businesses have as much money as possible, they'll hire more workers. One easy way to do that, they claim, is to lower their taxes.

With the election behind us, President Obama and the lame-duck Congress return to Washington to face a fiscal showdown, occasioned by automatic tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in after the first of the year.

By Dean Baker
Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Author
At this point almost everyone has heard of Nate Silver, the New York Times polling analyst who had all the pundits looking stupid on election night. Silver managed to call every state exactly right. He ignored the gibberish about momentum or voters’ moods and simply focuse...

In this clip from The Majority Report, New America Foundation's Lina Khan explains the growth of agricultural monopolies, why farmers are serfs on their own land, how Congressional Republicans killed the Obama Administration's efforts to reform the industry, and why they ultimately folded on the issue.

As President Obama gets closer to making his deal with the Republicans on the budget, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the fiscal cliff is an artificially contrived trap. Were it not for the two Bush wars and the two Bush tax cuts and the House Republican games of brinkmanship with the routine extension of the debt ceiling, there would be no “fiscal cliff.”

Over the weekend The Daily Kos highlighted a cartoon from Tom the Dancing Bug (cartoonist Rueben Bolling) that responded to Bill O’Reilly’s election night claim that Obama’s win signaled the death of traditional America. According to O’Reilly, “the demographics are changing, it’s not a traditional American anymore.” Bolling wondered what would happen if Barack Hussein Obama traveled back in time to the world of Leave it to Beaver. In this imaginary scenario, Obama tells the Cleavers of his plan to raise the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, reduce the gap between CEO pay and that of the lowest paid employees, and bolster the social safety net. The “Beave” and his family point out that those features were already in place in their traditional 1960s America. “Golly, mister,” the Beave exclaims, “I think you’re bringing back traditional America.”

A newly-signed Project Labor Agreement (PLA) between the Oneida Indian Nation and the Central and Northern New York Building Trades will provide much needed construction jobs throughout the winter months as construction begins on four new entertainment centers that will be added to the Turning Stone Resort and Casino.
Dubbed “Exit 33,” the project will house a new country music venue, a rock and roll venue, a piano bar, and a yet-to-be named lounge. Thanks to the PLA, the $25 million multi-venue will employ local workers. This is the 7th PLA the Oneida Nation has entered into as it continues to turn its resort into a successful regional operation.

"When you're $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece, and Republicans should put revenue on the table. We're this far in debt. We don't generate enough revenue. Capping deductions will help generate revenues. Raising tax rates will hurt job creation. I agree with Grover that we shouldn't raise rates, but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can't cap deductions. [...] I will violate the pledge, long story short for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reforms.

In our first post on the Clean Energy Forum we held recently at Tigercomm, we noted that there's an aggressive, ongoing effort by the fossil fuel lobby to push clean energy policy into the culture wars (hat tip to J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun). How to combat this assault is a pressing question not just for those of us in the clean economy, but also for politicians who get the urgent - even existential - need for our country to develop abundant energy that's clean and cost-effective.